The Yellow Wallpaper: The Rhetoric of Insanity - Essay Example

 ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: The Rhetoric of Insanity In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives the reader a close and disturbing picture of a woman’s descent into madness. What makes it so profoundly unnerving is the level of detail that Gilman uses to paint this picture. The slow progression into madness is meticulously noted and reproduced for the reader. This familiarity with the decay of the mind is no doubt drawn largely from Gilman’s own experience of neurasthenia at the hands of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the then expert on the subject of madness (‘The Yellow Wallpaper’). This paper attempts to track this very decline of the patient’s sanity and compare it to the structural breakdown of the story through noting the use of syntax, voice and other literary devices. It will do this by first noting how the text of the story itself reflects the narrator’s mental instability through its rhetorical devices. Then, it will trace how Gilman uses this story as meta-fiction to draw in the reader in the same way as the yellow wallpaper gets the narrator involved with it. Gilman’s commentary on the act of writing itself presented as the subtext in this story will also be explored. The story begins with the narrator stating that she and her husband are ‘mere ordinary people’ who have had the rare opportunity of renting out an ancestral house for the summer. However, in the very next line she declares ‘I would call it a haunted house’ and that there was ‘something queer about it.’ These phrases give the reader a clue that like the house she describes, the narrator herself is not quite what she seems at first sight. Under the façade of normalcy, there is visible a tendency towards ‘romantic felicity’ which sets the stage for what will take place next. The numerous asides in the first few passages again reflect the narrator’s uncertain identity. She uses words like ‘but’, ‘still’, ‘else’, ‘perhaps’ – signifying contradiction and hesitancy – several times over. The broken sentences and the several parentheses structurally reinforce the nervous frame of mind of the narrator who seems to be unable to even form complete sentences rationally. Apart from the sentence structure, the style of writing too is quite high-strung in nature. Words are italicized for emphasis frequently (delicious, draught, etc.) and exclamations and interrogative sentences are liberally used. For instance: John is a physician, and perhaps -- (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) -- perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster (Gilman 1). It can be noted here that she also uses personification and attribution of qualities of life to inanimate objects. Here, she calls paper ‘dead’. She goes on to say later how ‘I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have!’ This unusual attribution of human or lively characteristics to objects brings the reader’s attention to the gradual change in her perception of reality through the literary device of personification or anthropomorphism. The text gradually gets more incoherent as the narrator begins to reveal how desperate she is to write and how it is forbidden to her. Her story gets abruptly halted at certain junctions: No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put this away, -- he hates to have me write a word (Gilman 2). And, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. There's sister on the stairs! (Gilman 4). Apart from the sudden breaks in writing, the sentences also get shorter and progressively more uncaring of syntax or grammar. In the entry after the one mentioning Fourth of July, the narrator begins with: ‘I don't know why I should write this. I don't want to. I don't feel able.’ By the time the reader reaches the sixth page of the story, there can be found phrases like ‘That is, sometimes!’ and ‘That is why I watch it always’ and ‘- O no!’ This gets progressively worse till the last page where one finds the following extract: I want to astonish him. I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her! But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on! This bed will not move! (Gilman 9). These are no longer the lengthy, poetic sentences of the start, which make an attempt to introduce the context to the reader, as discussed above. There is no longer even the need for pretense as the narrator shifts from her initial social voice declaring herself ‘ordinary’ to a more reclusive, internal voice. The overall usage of the first person perspective also highlights the highly individual and personal nature of madness – something neither socially sanctioned nor understood, especially in the nineteenth century when this story was written. Apart from using the first person perspective that allows the reader to inhabit the space of the narrator and experience for herself the terror of losing one’s mind, Gilman goes a step further in bringing this home by drawing in the reader from time to time. Initially, the narrator asks conversational queries like ‘Else, why should it be let so cheaply?’ to involve the reader. Soon, however these questions reveal a quality of obsession. Questions like ‘and what can one do?’, ‘-what is one to do?’ and ‘But what is one to do?’ appear in quick succession, implicating the reader both as patient – by eliciting empathy – and as perpetrator – by the accusatory tone of the repetitive questions. It is almost as if, through her text, Gilman engages the reader both as sufferer at the hands of a society ill-equipped to handle matters like insanity, as well as criminal for being part of such a society. This meta-textual quality of the narrative renders the story itself as a kind of inducer of madness. The effect on the reader is much like that of the effect of the wallpaper on the narrator. As Gilman recounts in her essay on the story, readers had reacted in precisely this way: ‘[a Boston physician] said it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.’ The disturbing nature of the text with its vagaries of language, nervous vocabulary and stylized use of voice and perspective allow Gilman to put the reader through an experience similar to one that she and her narrator have themselves undergone. Gilman uses the story to further comment on the act of writing itself. The prohibition on writing, the need for it to be hidden and ‘sly’, the ‘heavy opposition’ that the narrator meets with in order to write - each draws the reader’s attention to the text itself. One is reminded through this diary entry style of writing how even in real life women authors, like Gilman herself, had to endure great opposition in order to write. It also brings to the fore the narrator’s insistence on putting her thoughts down – ‘But I must say what I feel and think in some way -- it is such a relief’ and ‘but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind’ – emphasizing the cathartic and healing power of writing. Writing is therefore portrayed as a means of self-expression, a better remedy than bed-rest and a political tool for asserting a woman’s selfhood in the times of social oppression. It is only just that this point should be made by writing or rhetoric itself. Through her masterful use of rhetorical and literary devices alone, Charlotte Perkins Gilman manages to convey the stifling feeling of turning insane, the social pressures faced by women and women writers of the time as well as the importance of the craft of writing all in one ten page story. Works Cited Gilman, Charlotte P. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ Boston: Small & Maynard, 1899. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ Short Story Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 62. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Nov. 2011. Read More